Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!tness7!bellcore!clyde!watmath!watdcsu!discat
From: discat@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (G. Strachan Elec. Eng.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FULLY INTERACTIVE SCRIPTS (A Tutorial)
Summary: AmigaDos does have interactive scripts
Message-ID: <4697@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 15 May 88 03:01:55 GMT
References: <8922@oberon.USC.EDU> <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: discat@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (G. Strachan Elec. Eng.)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 58

In article <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> pete@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Pete Goodeve) writes:
>
>
>[Marco Papa writes (in <8922@oberon.USC.EDU>) about his program "getline"
>to be used with XICON...]
>
>Yeah!!  Many thanks, Marco!  I've been meaning to to write a "stupid little
>program" like that since I first wrote xicon, but somehow I never got to
>it.  As usual, the first person who REALLY needs it is the one who has
>to write it...
>
>Anyhow, it nicely fills the "Interaction Void" in that area.

I have never posted to the net before so I hope I am doing everything
correct...

A while back I discovered that you can in fact create interactive scripts
from the CLI without the need for little programs to print the message and
read in the input etc.  I figured that it was fairly obvious and everyone
else knew it too.  Now I am not so sure because people still seem to use
these input programs.  If this is obvious I apologize.  Anyway here is how
it works.  Ever wondered why Amigados scripts require you to specify the 
number and name of arguments the script needs?  It needs this so the 
Execute program can tell the user what the required parameters are if he
asks with the '?' command.  Now once the Execute has printed out the required
parameters it reads from standard input to get the parameters.  So this can
be used to build an interactive script.  For example here is my startup
sequence script.

path sys:system add
path sys:utilities add
path sys:my_commands add
BindDrivers
mount pipe:
Execute sys:s/loader ?

where the script file loader is:

.key "Load WorkBench (y/n)"
if <Load WorkBench (y/n)$y> eq "y"
LoadWb
endcli >nil:
else
echo "Workbench not loaded"
shell s:.login
endif

When the Amiga starts up it will print out the "Load Workbench (y/n)" prompt
on the screen.  If I type in y it will load the workbench any other responce
and it will not.  This method has the advantage over writing a simple program to
get the input in that it is faster (no program to load) and is much more
flexable.  The disadvantage is that only one input can be obtained per script.
If you need more than one responce from the user then you have to put it in
different scripts.

Hope this helps some people

Gordon Strachan